Phonics

Coal Clough Academy’s approach to Phonics is through a Phonics programme offered to us by Abigail Steel. Abigail Steel’s Phonics programme is specifically aimed at Key Stage 3/Key Stage 4 students to help fill in any gaps in Key Stage 1/Key Stage 2 Phonics understanding. The programme is split into three booklets. Booklet one, two and three each booklet contains different areas of Phonics that students may need to recap or learn. 

Staff across all areas of our curriculum have received face to face training from Abigail to support the development and implementation of this approach to developing the reading skills of our pupils.

Students are identified for this intervention initially through reading assessments carried out throughout school which then helps us highlight the bottom 20% in each year group. We follow this up with a diagnostic assessment for those identified students. The diagnostic assessment helps identify the unmet need, whether that be comprehension, phonics understanding, not being able to decode words etc. The Diagnostic Assessment also identifies what level/booklet the student should be starting on. Diagnostic Assessments are done every half termly for those identified as needing phonics interventions. This is to track progress.